


The Valiant Archer's Stalwart Agent

by Ralkana



Series: Romance Novels [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Developing Relationship, Getting Together, M/M, romance novels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 13:18:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ralkana/pseuds/Ralkana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is introduced to romance novels at a young age. It sticks.</p><p>But will he find a happy ending of his own?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Valiant Archer's Stalwart Agent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lapillus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapillus/gifts).



> Disclaimer ~ Marvel's toys, not mine. I'm just playing with them.
> 
> For Carol, who gave me the awesome prompt.
> 
> Thanks to everyone in Feelschat for ideas and brainstorming and helping me settle on a title!

 

"What are you reading?" Clint asked softly, so that Lady Esmeralda -- that wasn't her real name, he knew, but _everybody_ called her Lady E -- could ignore him if she wanted. At thirteen, he had already been a veteran of not bothering people and not asking annoying questions for almost a decade.

But Lady E had never struck out at him for bothering her, and she'd never ignored him, and she didn't start now. 

"What, my dove?" she asked as she marked her place with her finger and looked up at Clint with a welcoming smile, gesturing him toward her.

He inched closer, pointing at her book. "Your book has an archer on the cover."

The cover was what had drawn his attention as he'd been walking by Lady E's trailer, where she was stretched out on an old lawn chair like a cat in the sun, reading. The man on the book had a quiver on his back and a bow slung across his chest, his tunic unlaced halfway, a pretty woman in a flowing gown in his arms, looking up at him in the moonlight.

Lady E glanced at the cover, smiling fondly. "It does, yes. He is brave and valiant and true, the wicked duke's bastard cousin."

"It's about him?"

"And his lady love, yes. Would you like to read it?"

To Clint's astonishment, she held it out to him. He stepped back so fast he nearly fell over. 

"I -- I can't, you're not done with it."

Her laugh tinkled like chimes in the wind. "Oh, sweetheart. I've read this one so many times I've almost got it memorized. Go on, take it. It's about chivalry and honor and bravery and love, and -- "

She broke off with a frown as a particularly raucous roar of laughter came from where the roustabouts were gathered together. They were taking full advantage of a rare day off, passing around bottles and cans and well-worn stories. 

" _Someone_ has to teach you these things, my dove."

Clint eyed the book warily, feeling the flush of embarrassment climb the back of his neck. "I -- I'm not very good at reading."

"Well, the only way to get better is to practice, isn't it? And if you need help understanding a word or -- or anything else you might read, you come to Lady E, and she will explain it to you, yes?"

The way she said _anything else_ made Clint's eyes go wide. "Is there... Is there _sex_ in that book?"

Her laughter rang through the air again. "Perhaps, my dove. No more than you have seen or heard from those blowhards there since you have been with us. You must learn these things anyway, and the lady loves in my valiant archer's future would much rather my books and I teach you than those ruffians, I am sure. Go on, take it."

She sat up and offered the book to him once more, and he shyly took it. He stared at the archer on the cover and wondered if his arms would ever be that muscled, his shoulders that wide.

"Thank you for letting me borrow it," he said in a rush. "I -- I promise I'll take real good care of it, and I'll bring it back to you as soon as I can. If you want it back before I'm done with it, just -- just tell me, okay?"

Her hand cupped the back of his head, and he fought off a flinch.

"Take your time, my dove. A good story is to be enjoyed, savored -- not rushed. And when you are done, there are plenty more."

She gestured toward the door of her caravan. He had been invited in for tea once, strong and bitter but it warmed him up so good, and he remembered seeing the tiny bookcase. Tiny but crammed, well-worn books filling every inch and spilling off the top.

He nodded and fled to the trailer he shared with Barney and several other young men, eager to begin the book before his brother came in for the night.

Clint read the book every spare moment he could, which wasn't often -- there were plenty of uses for a young back and young arms, and he was passed back and forth between everyone during setup and breakdown. But whenever he could, he escaped up trees or to the roof of his caravan, or even into Lady E's trailer, where they read together in companionable silence.

He was very careful to make sure the book was hidden away in his things whenever his brother was around. The other boys didn't care -- they took no mind of Clint when they weren't handing him things to carry or canvas to fold -- but something told him Barney would care. So he quickly tucked it away whenever he heard Barney's heavy tread.

The book was not long, but it took Clint months to read. He was too embarrassed to ask Lady E when he didn't understand a word -- he knew he was stupid but he didn't like to advertise it -- but she must have seen the confusion on his face when they read together, his finger stumbling to a halt on the page as he tried to figure out a word. The next time he came to her trailer, she gave him a second book: a battered dictionary.

Clint stared at her. "I can't take this! I can't take another one of your books, I already have this one!"

"This one is yours," she said with a smile, her long black hair curling around her heart-shaped face, dark eyes dancing even in the soft light. "Look, it has your name in it."

She opened the worn cover to show him his name, _Clinton F. Barton_ , written in her beautiful cursive -- and in pen, no less. He didn't think he'd ever told her his full first name, and he _knew_ he'd never told her his middle initial.

"It bears your name, so you _must_ take it now, my dove."

So he did, and he used it. Often.

He didn't ask her about the other parts of the book either, the ones that made him squirm and flush, too warm in the stuffy air of his trailer, his lumpy pillow shoved over his lap. He just couldn't.

The brave and smart-mouthed archer fought and killed the duke who'd killed the archer's brother, rescuing the woman he loved, a beautiful young heiress the duke had blackmailed into marriage. She thanked him with a passionate kiss, and Clint was almost sad when he turned the last page and found the other side blank.

He loved it. There were fights and horses and adventures and plots and scheming and -- and sex, and the good guy beat the bad guy, got rich, _and_ rescued the beautiful woman.

And he'd read the whole thing. By himself.

He couldn't wait to do it again.

When he handed Lady E her book back with a proud grin, she simply laughed and handed him another one.

This one didn't have an archer on the cover, but it had a big guy on a huge white horse, a giant sword on his back and a lady swooning in his arms -- (swooning was a new word he'd learned) -- so Clint figured he'd give it a try.

Time passed, and Clint worked hard learning the skills that would shape his life, but he still spent every free moment with a book in his hands, on his own or curled on the floor of Lady E's caravan, slowly working his way through her well-loved collection.

He used his dictionary less and less, but he kept it by his side anyway, tucking it and whatever book he was reading at the time into the bag that held his most important possessions.

When his life fell apart and everything and everyone he knew and loved left him behind, battered and broken in a hospital bed, that bag was all he had, tossed aside with him, both of them no more than an afterthought.

The only thing running through Clint's mind was that Lady E was gone, and he still had her book, the last one she'd let him borrow. He knew that he should find a way to get it back to her -- he wasn't a _thief_ \-- but he couldn't bear to.

Obsessing over the book kept him from thinking about everything else that had gone so horribly wrong, and if he spent nights curled around it, eyes red and throat dry from the tears he wouldn't let fall, no one knew it but him.

 

**~ ~ ~ ~ ~**

 

The thing about being a merc was that Clint had a ton of free time. Between jobs, during jobs, coming down after a job -- he had plenty of time to think, and the _last_ thing he wanted to do was think.

So he read. Every town he passed through, he hit up a Friends of the Library sale, or a used bookstore. Romance novels were cheap and plentiful, and they ranged from historical to supernatural to suspenseful to futuristic and everything in between. He'd spend a few dollars on a handful that looked interesting and drop them back in the bookdrop on his way out of town.

Clint read them all, but he preferred historicals -- probably not a surprise, given his chosen weapon. He'd never claimed to be a futurist.

He'd realized even before the circus left him behind that he was _far_ more interested in the heroes than the heroines, and all the adolescent fumbling he'd done in the shadows of the caravans and the tents had confirmed it. He'd never told Lady E, though he guessed she might have known -- there was less talk of lady loves the older he got. So now, if he chose his books by the hero on the cover, well -- that's what the covers were for, wasn't it?

He didn't keep track of the authors he read or the books he picked up, he just read. When the walls were too close and the night was too dark, he lost himself in the story, and it didn't matter what happened between the first page and the last, as long as the hero and the heroine found their way to each other in the end.

His life consisted of happy endings in fiction and the opposite in reality, and he drifted along in that state until the day an unassuming man in a suit stepped up beside him in the stacks at the Richfield library's Ten Cent Sale, and _everything_ changed.

 

**~ ~ ~ ~ ~**

 

If Clint had thought his long stretches of idleness would disappear when he joined SHIELD, he couldn't have been more wrong. If anything, SHIELD field agents spent even more time idle and bored and waiting than he had on his own.

Agents in a holding pattern read everything they could get their hands on -- romance novels, years-old magazines, the backs of cereal boxes. No one thought it strange if Clint pulled a Harlequin out of his go bag. For the most part, no one even noticed.

Some of the agents tried to hide their reading material, and that only made them targets -- SHIELD agents were trained to notice unusual or shifty behavior. Clint never bothered. He didn't care what they thought of him, and well, he wasn't called Hawkeye for nothing.

" _The Sheik's Irish Rose_ , Barton?" Sitwell asked one day, a smirk clear in his tone.

"Fuck you, Jasper, like you don't have _The Duke's Darkest Desires_ shoved in your carryon," Clint shot back without even losing his place.

The quiet huff of amusement that came from his handler behind him would've made it more than worth it, even without the way Sitwell flushed to the top of his cueball head.

For the first time since the circus, he had a place of his own, a home base to return to, even if it was just the SHIELD barracks. He could've started a collection like Lady E's, but he had no desire to -- he wasn't one for rereading. Once he closed the cover, he moved on. The only two books his steel shelf in the barracks held were his battered old dictionary, his name inside worn from trailing his finger across it, and _The Rake's Bartered Bride_ , the last book Lady E had ever lent him.

His reading time diminished as his seniority at SHIELD increased. Senior specialists and agents didn't have nearly the hurry-up-and-wait time that juniors did. As the world went crazy and events began slowly spiraling into chaos, Clint had no time for fiction, even the happy endings he still craved.

And then he had no time for anything but obedience.

There wasn't any time for reading after, either. The Avengers were involved in the post-battle cleanup whenever they weren't fighting off whatever opportunistic vultures decided to take advantage of the chaos.

Clint's every spare moment was spent helping Coulson through physical therapy, though his help mostly consisted of moral support and standing back and watching, guilt and awe churning within him as he watched his handler power through the injury and the pain to get himself back on his feet.

It was months after the Battle of New York when the team finally had a lazy, rainy afternoon to themselves. Nat was curled on the sofa watching something dark and foreign on her tablet while Bruce and Tony batted incomprehensible theories back and forth, passing one of Tony's tiny little handhelds between them. Steve was teaching Thor chess, the lesson interspersed with tales of remembered battles and snatches of Asgardian sagas, and Coulson sat at the other end of the large dining table. After-action reports were spread all around him, but he seemed to be paying no attention to them, absorbed in something on his phone and glancing up at the chess match every so often.

Clint tried not to stare, but it was impossible. Tony's insistence that Coulson move into the tower toward the end of his recovery had been disastrous for Clint's self-control.

Coulson living in the tower meant Coulson spending his downtime in the tower, which meant Coulson in casual clothes, and that was major trouble for Clint.

Though he was handsome and his eyes were gorgeous, Coulson didn't look much like the heroes Clint favored on his book covers, but he'd faced down an alien god with an untested weapon and lived, and there were actual Asgardian sagas told about him. Clint found his quiet competence more appealing than any heroic bluster framed by flowing, burnished locks or stubbled ruggedness.

Now, he was sitting surrounded by files, dressed in soft, worn, comfortable clothes with the muted light of a cloudy afternoon slanting over him and the hint of a smile playing on his lips whenever Steve or Thor laughed over their game, and Clint was in danger of staring a hole in the side of the man's head.

Clint had to find something to do. He ducked into his rooms to grab the book he'd started months ago, and then he returned to sprawl across from Natasha, sinking into the incredibly comfortable sofa. He propped his socked feet in her lap, grinning winningly at her when she narrowed her eyes at him. She didn't break any part of him for it, so he considered it a victory and opened the book up to the ragged receipt marking his place.

He didn't remember the story at all, but that was okay. He'd remember, or he'd figure it out soon enough.

Quickly losing himself -- half in the story and half in hazy memories of quiet afternoons in Lady E's trailer -- Clint had no idea how much time had passed until the book was suddenly plucked from his hands.

"Whatcha readin'?" Tony asked curiously, peering at the cover.

"The hell, Stark?" Clint asked angrily, shooting upright.

" _The Lawman's Wildcat Mistress?_ " Tony asked incredulously. "Seriously? Barton, are you reading a _romance novel?_ "

Clint rolled his eyes. "No, Tony, _The Lawman's Wildcat Mistress_ is a ranching textbook. You wanna give me my book back?"

"Why are you reading a romance novel?"

"Because it's entertaining," he snapped, snatching the book back from Tony. "Dammit, you lost my place."

"I thought you'd read -- well, I gotta admit, I never much figured you for the reading type," he said speculatively, raising his hands in surrender when Clint's glare intensified. That was and always would be a sore spot for Clint, though he wasn't about to admit it. "Guess I figured you'd read Clancy or Vince Flynn or Clive Cussler."

Clint stared at him. "I get enough of that crap at work, why the hell would I want to read about it on my off time?"

"Yeah, but... Harlequins?"

The amused condescension in Stark's tone grated on Clint's last nerve.

"What the hell's wrong with romance novels? Not all of us are gonna get a happy ending, okay, and it's nice to read sometimes about people who live happy lives and aren't always doing stupid shit and fucking everything up!"

Silence rang in the room after his angry words, and Clint bit off a curse. He glared at all of them without really looking at any of them -- without looking toward Coulson at all -- and strode out of the room, his book clutched in a white-knuckled hand.

Back in his rooms, he tossed the book on his couch and ran his hands through his hair. Well, it wasn't like they didn't already know he had issues -- they all did. Between them all, they had enough issues to fill a library. But -- 

His door chime rang, and he groaned. "Who is it, JARVIS?"

"Agent Coulson, sir."

"Of course." Clint swore under his breath, scrubbing a hand through his hair again before crossing to open the door.

Coulson stood there in his dark jeans and sneakers, his soft blue-gray sweater emphasizing the clear blue of his eyes. He looked good enough to eat, and Clint looked away, waving him in and heading for his fridge before he did something stupid. Something else stupid.

"Come in," he said over his shoulder. "I'm gonna grab a beer. You want something?"

"No, thank you."

Clint popped the cap off his bottle and took a bracing swig, and then padded back toward the sofa. Coulson had already claimed one end of it, and he was watching Clint curiously, Clint's discarded book in his hands, mild concern just barely creasing his brow.

Dropping onto the couch, Clint propped his feet up on the coffee table. He was kind of at a loss about Coulson's visit. His little outburst wasn't enough to cause a real problem; there was no need to smooth over rough spots or soothe injured egos.

He took another sip and then set his beer on the coffee table, making sure it hit one of his bullseye coasters -- he had a coffee table and coasters, what the hell, when did this become his life? -- and turned to Coulson.

"Barton," the man started, and then uncharacteristically, he stopped and took a deep breath, carefully letting it out. "Clint," he amended. "Can I ask you a question?"

Clint eyed him, surprised, and also a little wary. 

"Sure, go for it," he said. There weren't very many people he trusted without question, but Coulson was at the top of the list.

The other man leaned closer, his gaze locking onto Clint's. "Did you mean what you said? Do you really believe there isn't a happy ending out there for you?"

Clint blinked in surprise. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but that wasn't it. His life wasn't exactly a joyful trip down memory lane, but if anybody knew that, it was Coulson. He shrugged uneasily.

"Don't really lead a white-picket-fence life, Coulson. None of us do. Reading about them is about as close as I'm gonna get."

"That's not true," Coulson said sharply, startling Clint with the intensity in his tone.

"C'mon, sir -- "

"Phil."

Clint stared for a moment and then shrugged again, more comfortably this time.

"Okay, Phil, then. 2.5 kids and a minivan, not really in the forecast here."

"Is it the kids and the minivan that you're looking for?" Coulson -- Phil -- asked him, gaze searching in a way Clint had never seen before. "Or are those just the trappings? Because none of us are the picket-fence type, that's true, but happiness isn't out of your grasp, Clint. A lot of SHIELD agents are happily married, with children. And as for your own team, Thor and Jane are very happy, very _enthusiastically_ happy, and Tony and Pepper haven't killed each other yet."

That surprised a laugh out of Clint, but it ended kind of baffled. "Why... you seem to care a lot about this," he said tentatively.

Phil's face softened, and his eyes filled with... affection? Clint had to be reading him wrong.

"Your happiness is very important to me," he said, lips quirking into a wry smile.

"The team, you mean," Clint clarified, feeling like the ground was shifting dangerously beneath him. "The team's happiness is important to you."

Phil shook his head. "No. Well, yes, obviously, but that's... not what I mean."

Clint stared at him in wonder. The look on Phil's face wasn't anywhere near anything Clint had ever seen on him before. It was fond, and nervous, and... hungry. Clint shook his head.

"You can't... you never... I never saw a single sign, and believe me, I _looked!_ This is crazy!"

Phil shifted in his seat at Clint's last words -- a tiny flinch, Clint realized in amazement, but before Clint could hastily rephrase, Phil said, "I know. I was very, very careful not to let you see."

"But _why?_ " Clint asked in shock. "You had to know -- I know you've caught me staring! I don't understand -- "

"You've always seemed very interested in... short term arrangements, Clint," Phil said, "And that's not what I'm looking for."

Clint cursed every date and one night stand and two week fling he'd ever had, so busy trying to get over his stupid crush on his apparently-not-so-unobtainable handler that he hadn't bothered to look, to _see_. Phil was very good at playing his cards close to his chest, but nobody saw better than Hawkeye -- when he bothered to look.

He stared at Phil, who shrugged, the movement of his broad shoulders graceful under his sweater and enough to make Clint's mouth go dry.

"But what you said earlier," Phil continued, "Well, it makes me think I may have... miscalculated."

Clint couldn't tell if the hint of annoyance in his tone was for all the time wasted, or just because he'd made an error in judgment. He thought it might actually be the second, and he couldn't help but grin.

Staring at Phil, Clint watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, and he longed to lean forward and bury his face against Phil's neck, breathe in his scent and feel the softness of Phil's sweater under his cheek, hear the sounds the other man might make if he nipped right _there_.

He blinked, shaking himself out of it, but the realization that Phil might _let_ him was terrifying. He shook his head, the motion frantic. He _knew_ what happened when he wanted something so much, when it was right there, so close.

"No," he said, his voice high with nerves, and he forced himself to breathe. "No, this is a bad idea, this isn't a romance novel, it doesn't work like this. You don't want to get involved with me, Phil, I fuck up everything I touch."

"That isn't true -- "

"Yes, it is!" he yelped. "You, Phil, you of _anybody_ knows it is, and -- "

His words choked off as Phil's hands came up to cup Clint's cheeks. He stared into Phil's determined eyes, still shaking his head weakly.

"It _isn't_ ," Phil said firmly. "Clint, I know this isn't a romance novel. We're not going to get a happy ever after ending just because we deserve it -- and we _do_ deserve it, both of us."

"Phil -- "

"This year is my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, Clint," Phil told him. "You think they haven't ever screwed up -- both of them? That there hasn't been shouting and slammed doors and hurt feelings? You think I don't know that happy endings take hard work?"

He smiled, and it was affectionate, and exasperated, and beautiful. "Clint Barton, you've been hard work since the day I met you. You think that's going to stop me now?"

Clint stared at him, lost for words as Phil's thumbs stroked gently over his cheeks, rasping against the light stubble there. After a moment, he swallowed hard, forcing the words up and out past his pounding heart. They still came out in a shaky whisper.

"You really want to try this?"

"I really, really do," Phil whispered back, just before their lips met in a kiss that started out tentative and quickly turned searing.

It might not be happily ever after yet, Clint thought hazily, but it was a damn good start.

**END**

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover Art for The Valiant Archer's Stalwart Agent](https://archiveofourown.org/works/882625) by [kultiras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kultiras/pseuds/kultiras), [pyroblaze18 (kultiras)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kultiras/pseuds/pyroblaze18)




End file.
